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Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

#91

Post by dangus »

Business value and technical implementation details method are not necessarily connected in any way…something that in my opinion many engineers should think about more often.

You can make a lot of money on sophisticated custom technology, or you can make a lot of money with very little technology or even white-labeling someone else’s technology.

Every business should focus on the basic value proposition on for their business and product and make decisions that support it.

How do we make money, and where is the best place for our time to be invested to make more money? That’s it, that’s the only question there is.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

#92

Post by oneplane »

mikewarot wrote: post #85
redisman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you can’t usually afford to target just a Windows 95 PC or equivalent today so such a tool cannot exist. The UI must morph and adapt and feel native across phones, tablets, retina displays, etc. Even video games these days need to adapt to a different UX on each platform even thou they are the closest to having one unified UI across the gamut

It's unrealistic to expect a full, productive, desktop experience on any smaller devices. Giving up on the desktop is a huge step backwards.

On the other hand, the market has expanded beyond economies where users have the space, power and physical safety to actually own a desktop. For some people their first, last and only "PC" is their smartphone. Your choice then becomes embracing those users or not having those users at all.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

#94

Post by paxys »

While no-code tools have existed forever, the difference is now they have finally found their niche – workflow automation for mid to large sized companies.

I have personally seen entire departments move from pen and paper to off-the-shelf boxed software to SaaS and now to no-code apps. You can finally customize your software exactly how you like without hiring a team of developers, and that's a great thing.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

#95

Post by lambdasquirrel »

jl6 wrote: post #42

This is an imperfect analogy, but consider for a moment the role Microsoft Excel plays. Excel allows non-coders to do many useful things, and provides a relatively gentle on-ramp to actual code via formulas. If you take that on-ramp and keep going, towards VBA and add-ins and other pieces of Microsoft technology, you might wind up becoming a full-time software developer, leaving Excel behind and using “real” tools. N…

The problem is as it's always been. Solving problems in the general sense is hard. It is true in design, it is true in AI, it is true in the automotive world, and on the battlefield. Specialized for one task is easier to learn, and easier to design for. General is harder to learn, and harder to design for.

With that in mind, it's interesting that we still even have "general-purpose programming languages." There is some specialization for sure, but that's partly because of things like e.g. the browser only supports Javascript. And then you see things going back the other way, e.g. with NodeJS.

So I'd wait till we see some actual, real specialization in the languages / tools that engineers use, beyond "ecosystem" reasons. In the meantime, we've seen tools that help non-programmers "automate" things. Everything from CAD to Wix, Salesforce, Figma, etc. would fall under that umbrella. But then you still have code. If what you want is automation / labor-force-multipliers, the common denominator will still be highly generalized, and therefore, hard.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

#96

Post by cynusx »

I think most no-code solutions fail to think about what happens when a software engineer turns out to be needed after all.

It makes it easy for really simple websites/apps to be built, but the reality is that business people have no idea of how complex something can be and after they started using no-code tools they hit a hard wall of having to rebuild everything with a real software developer.

In reality though it would be nice if there's a solid hand-off between no-code and the "properly build and tested" world.

That said, they can be good for prototyping or brochure apps/websites that just serve information and have some forms.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

#97

Post by cynusx »

paxys wrote: post #94

While no-code tools have existed forever, the difference is now they have finally found their niche – workflow automation for mid to large sized companies. I have personally seen entire departments move from pen and paper to off-the-shelf boxed software to SaaS and now to no-code apps. You can finally customize your software exactly how you like without hiring a team of developers, and that's a great thing.

Which no-code apps have this ability? the ones I know are rather basic

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

#98

Post by albeebe1 »

I think what we're seeing is what we've always seen. That is, we start at the lowest levels and continuously work towards a higher and higher level. Constantly making the development process more efficient. No-code solves a problem, but it's not a panacea.

The movement i'm most interested in as a backend developer is the no-software movement.

The idea that the entire process of developing and deploying services can take place in the browser. Why install an IDE when i can just code in a browser. Why install git when i can press a button in the browser and have it handled in the cloud. Why run the code locally when i can run it in the cloud and stream the output to the browser. Why install a bunch of software and configure everything to work on my machine, when it can all be handled in the cloud and interfaced via the browser.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

#99

Post by henrikschroder »

jerf wrote: post #10

It's interesting, but always calibrate their claims against the fact this is about the tenth time this movement has come around. This movement literally goes back to COBOL. That is not a typo. It's not only likely older than you are, but probably much older than you are. I recognize COBOL may not seem like "no-code", but that's just because "no-code" is a stupid label. "No-code" doesn't mean "no code" just like "serv…

The first time I encountered something that called itself "no-code" was when the internet portal I worked for (Remember those?) decided to offer a "webpage builder" for its users. I didn't work on it, but just looking at the limited webpages you could build with it, how all of those were basically just our best practices, and how the amount of code needed to support the builder was just massive compared to the code it generated, it was pretty clear to me that my job security wasn't threatened.

Every single solution like this has an edge, a limitation, and when you reach that edge, the answer is always "well, you can edit the code directly if you know what you're doing..."

It's exactly as you say, every solution like this can do the already mapped parts of programming, but they are fundamentally incapable of being used for the unmapped parts, the woods, the edges, the limits.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

#100

Post by k__ »

Isn't this what software development is all about?

We make tech more accessible for people who can't code and then we move to the next thing.

I saw a bunch of freelancers fail, because they had the impression they could sell people basic homepages as a job for their whole life...

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